Victorian Women Writers Project

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THE LADY OF LA GARAYE.

PART IV.

• SILENT old gateway! whose two columns stand
• Like simple monuments on either hand;
• No trellised iron‐work, with pleasant view
• Of trim‐set flowery gardens shining through;
• No bolts to bar unasked intruders out;
• No well‐oiled hinge whose sound, like one low note
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• Of music, tells the listening hearts that yearn,
• Expectant of dear footsteps, where to turn;
• No ponderous bell whose loud vociferous tone
• Into the rose‐decked lodge hath echoing gone,
• Bringing the porter forth with brief delay,
• To spread those iron wings that check the way;
• Nothing but ivy‐leaves, and crumbling stone;
• Silent old gateway,—even thy life is gone!

• But ere those columns, lost in ivvied shade,
• Black on the midnight sky their forms portrayed;
• And ere thy gate, by damp weeds overtopped,
• Swayed from its rusty fastenings and then dropped,—
• When it stood portal to a living home,
• And saw the living faces go and come,
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• What various minds, and in what various moods,
• Crossed the fair paths of these sweet solitudes!

• Old gateway, thou hast witnessed times of mirth,
• When light the hunter’s gallop beat the earth;
• When thy quick wakened echo could but know
• Laughter and happy voices, and the flow
• Of jocund spirits, when the pleasant sight
• Of broidered dresses (careless youth’s delight,)
• Trooped by at sunny morn, and back at falling night.

• And thou hast witnessed triumph,—when the Bride
• Passed through,—the stately Bridegroom at her side;
• The village maidens scattering many a flower,
• Bright as the bloom of living beauty’s dower,
• With cheers and shouts that bid the soft tears rise
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• Of joy exultant, in her downcast eyes.
• And thou hadst gloom, when,—fallen from beauty’s state,—
• Her mournful litter rustled through the gate,
• And the wind waved its branches as she past,—
• And the dishevelled curls around her cast,
• Rose on that breeze and kissed, before they fell,
• The iron scroll‐work with a wild farewell!

• And thou hast heard sad dirges chanted low,
• And sobbings loud from those who saw with woe
• The feet borne forward by a funeral train,
• Which homeward never might return again,
• Nor in the silence of the frozen nights
• Reclaim that dwelling and its lost delights;
• But lowly lie, however wild love’s yearning,
• The dust that clothed them, unto dust returning.
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• Through thee, how often hath been borne away
• Man’s share of dual life—the senseless clay!
• Through thee how oft hath hastened, glad and bold,
• God’s share—the eager spirit in that mould;
• But neither life nor death hath left a trace
• On the strange silence of that vacant place.

• Not vacant in the day of which I write!
• Then rose thy pillared columns fair and white;
• Then floated out the odorous pleasant scent
• Of cultured shrubs and flowers together blent,
• And o’er the trim‐kept gravel’s tawny hue
• Warm fell the shadows and the brightness too.

• Count Claud is at the gate, but not alone:
• Who is his friend?
• They pass, and both are gone.
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• Gone, by the bright warm path, to those sad halls
• Where now his slackened step in sadness falls;
• Sadness of every day and all day long,
• Spite of the summer glow and wild bird’s song.

• Who is that slow‐paced Priest to whom he bows
• Courteous precedence, as he sighing shows
• The oriel window where his Gertrude dwells,
• And all her mournful story briefly tells?
• Who is that friend whose hand with gentle clasp
• Answers his own young agonizing grasp,
• And looks upon his burst of passionate tears
• With calmer grieving of maturer years?

• Oh! well round that friend’s footsteps might be breathed
• The blessing which the Italian poet wreathed
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• Into a garland gay of graceful words,
• As full of music as a lute’s low chords;
• “Blessed be the year, the time, the day, the hour,”
• When He passed through those gates, whose gentle power
• Lifted with ministrant zeal the leaden grief,
• Probed the soul’s festering wounds and brought relief,
• And taught the sore vexed spirits where to find
• Balm that could heal, and thoughts that cheered the mind.

• Prior of Benedictines, did thy prayers
• Bring down a blessing on them unawares,
• While yet their faces were to thee unknown,
• And thou wert kneeling in thy cell alone,
• Where thy meek litanies went up to Heaven,
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• That ALL who suffered might have comfort given,
• And thy heart yearned for all thy fellow‐men,
• Smitten with sorrows far beyond thy ken?

• He sits by Gertrude’s couch, and patient listens
• To her wild grieving voice;—his dark eye glistens
• With tearful sympathy for that young wife,
• Telling the torture of her broken life;
• And when he answers her she seems to know
• The peace of resting by a river’s flow.
• Tender his words, and eloquently wise;
• Mild the pure fervour of his watchful eyes;
• Meek with serenity of constant prayer
• The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare;
• The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still;
• With a sweet calm that speaks an angel’s will,
• Resolving service to his God’s behest,
• And ever musing how to serve Him best.
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• Not old, nor young; with manhood’s gentlest grace;
• Pale to transparency the pensive face,
• Pale not with sickness, but with studious thought,
• The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
• With something faint and fragile in the whole,
• As though ’twere but a lamp to hold a soul.
• Such was the friend who came to La Garaye,
• And Claud and Gertrude lived to bless the day!

• There is a love that hath not lover’s wooing,
• Love’s wild caprices, nor love’s hot pursuing;
• But yet a clinging and persistent love,
• Tenderly binding, most unapt to rove;
• As full of fervent and adoring dreams,
• As the more gross and earthlier passion seems,
• But far more single‐hearted; from its birth,
• With humblest notions of unequal worth!
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• Guided and guidable; with thankful trust;
• Timid, lest all complaint should be unjust;
• Circling,—a lesser orb,—around its star
• With tributary love, that dare not war.
• Such is the love which aged men inspire;
• Priests, whose pure hearts are full of sacred fire;
• And friends of dear friends dead,—whom trembling we admire.
• A touch of mystery lights the rising morn
• Of love for those who lived ere we were born;
• Whose eyes the eyes of ancestors have seen;
• Whose voice hath answered voices that have been;
• Whose words show wisdom gleaned in days gone by,
• As glory flushes from a sunset sky.
• Our judgment leans upon them, feeling weak;
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• Our hearts lift yearning towards them as they speak,
• And silently we listen, lest we lose
• Some teaching truth, and benefits refuse.

• With such a love did Gertrude learn to greet
• The gentle Prior; whose slow‐pacing feet
• Each day of her sad life made welcome sound
• Across the bright path of her garden ground.
• And ere the golden summer past away,
• And leaves were yellowing with a pale decay;
• Ere, drenched by sweeping storms of autumn rain,
• In turbulent billows lay the beaten grain;
• Ere Breton orchards, ripening, turned to red
• All the green freshness which the spring‐time shed,
• Mocking the glory which the sunset fills
• With stripes of crimson o’er the painted hills,—
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• Her thoughts submitted to his thoughts’ control,
• As ’twere an elder brother of her soul.

• Well she remembered how that soul was stirred,
• By the rebuking of his gentle word,
• When in her faltering tones complaint was given,
• “What had I done; to earn such fate from Heaven?”

• “Oh, Lady! here thou liest, with all that wealth
• Or love can do to cheer thee back to health;
• With books that woo the fancies of thy brain,
• To happier thoughts than brooding over pain;
• With light, with flowers, with freshness, and with food,
• Dainty and chosen, fit for sickly mood:
• With easy couches for thy languid frame,
• Bringing real rest, and not the empty name;
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• And silent nights, and soothed and comforted days;
• And Nature’s beauty spread before thy gaze:—

• “What have the Poor done, who instead of these
• Suffer in foulest rags each dire disease,
• Creep on the earth, and lean against the stones,
• When some disjointing torture racks their bones;
• And groan and grope throughout the wearying night,
• Denied the rich man’s easy luxury,—light?
• What has the Babe done,—who, with tender eyes,
• Blinks at the world a little while, and dies;
• Having first stretched, in wild convulsive leaps,
• His fragile limbs, which ceaseless suffering keeps
• In ceaseless motion, till the hour when death
• Clenches his little heart, and stops his breath?
• What has the Idiot done, whose half‐formed soul
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• Scarce knows the seasons as they onward roll;
• Who flees with gibbering cries, and bleeding feet,
• From idle boys who pelt him in the street!
• What have the fair girls done, whose early bloom
• Wasting like flowers that pierce some creviced tomb,
• Plants that have only known a settled shade,
• Lives that for others’ uses have been made,—
• Toil on from morn to night, from night to morn,
• For those chance pets of Fate, the wealthy born;
• Bound not to murmur, and bound not to sin,
• However bitter be the bread they win?
• What hath the Slandered done, who vainly strives
• To set his life among untarnished lives?
• Whose bitter cry for justice only fills
• The myriad echoes lost among life’s hills;
• Who hears for evermore the self‐same lie
• Clank clog‐like at his heel when he would try
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• To climb above the loathly creeping things
• Whose venom poisons, and whose fury stings,
• And so slides back; for ever doomed to hear
• The old witch, Malice, hiss with serpent leer
• The old hard falsehood to the old bad end,
• Helped, it may be, by some traducing friend,
• Or one rocked with him on one mother’s breast,—
• Learned in the art of where to smite him best.

• “What we must suffer, proves not what was done:
• So taught the God of Heaven’s anointed Son,
• Touching the blind man’s eyes amid a crowd
• Of ignorant seething hearts who cried aloud
• The blind, or else his parents, had offended;
• That was Man’s preaching; God that preaching mended.
• But whatsoe’er we suffer, being still
• Fixed and appointed by the heavenly will,
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• Behoves us bear with patience as we may
• The Potter’s moulding of our helpless clay.
• Much, Lady, hath He taken, but He leaves
• What outweighs all for which thy spirit grieves;
• No greater gift lies even in God’s control
• Than the large love that fills a human soul.
• If taking that, He left thee all the rest,
• Would not vain anguish angush wring thy pining breast?
• If, taking all, that dear love yet remains,
• Hath it not balm for all thy bitter pains?

• “Oh, Lady! there are lonely deaths that make
• The heart that thinks upon them burn and ache;
• And such I witnessed on the purple shore
• Where scorched Vesuvius rears his summit hoar,
• And Joan’s gaunt palace, with its skull‐like eyes,
• And barbarous and cruel memories,
• For ever sees the blue wave lap its feet,
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• And the white glancing of the fishers’ fleet.
• The death of the FORSAKEN! lone he lies,
• His sultry noon, fretted by slow black flies,
• That settle on pale cheek and quivering brow
• With a soft torment. The increasing glow
• Brings the full shock of day; the hot air grows
• Impure alike from action and repose;
• Bruised fruit, and faded flowers, and dung and dust,
• The rich man’s stew‐pan, and the beggar’s crust,
• Poison the faint lips opening hot and dry,
• Loathing the plague they breathe with gasping sigh,
• The thick oppression of its stifling heat,
• The busy murmur of the swarming street,
• The roll of chariots and the rush of feet;
• With the tormenting music’s nasal twang
• Distorting melodies his loved ones sang!
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• “Then comes a change—not silence, but less sound,
• Less echo of hard footsteps on the ground,
• Less rolling thunder of vociferous words,
• As though the clang struck out in crashing chords
• Fell into single notes, that promise rest
• To the wild fever of the labouring breast.

• “Last cometh on the night—the hot, bad night,
• With less of all—of heat, of dust, of light;
• And leaves him watching, with a helpless stare,—
• The theme of no one’s hope and no one’s care!
• The cresset lamp, that stands so grim and tall,
• Widens and wavers on the upper wall;
• And calming down from day’s perpetual storm
• His thoughts’ dark chaos takes some certain form,
• And he begins to pine for joys long lost,
• Or hopes unrealized;—till bruised and tost
• He sends his soul vain journeys through the gloom
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• For radiant eyes that should have wept his doom.
• Then clasps his hands in prayer, and for a time,
• Gives aspirations unto things sublime:
• But sinking to some speck of sorrow found,
• Some point which, like a little festering wound,
• Holds all his share of pain,—he gazes round,
• Seeking some vanished form, some hand whose touch
• Would almost cure him; and he yearns so much,
• That passionate painful sobs his breathing choke,
• And the thin bubble of his dream hath broke!

• “So, still again; and all alone again;
• Not even a vision present with his pain.
• The hot real round him; the forsaken bed;
• The tumbled pillow, and the restless head.
• The drink so near his couch, and yet too far
• For feeble hands to reach; the cold fine star
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• That glitters through the unblinded window‐pane,
• And with slow gliding leaves it blank again;
• Till morning flushing through the world once more,
• Brings the dull likeness of the day before,—
• The first vague freshness of new wings unfurled,
• As though Hope lighted, somewhere, in the world;
• The heat of noon; the fading down of light;
• The glimmering evening, and the restless night.
• And then again the morning; and the noon;
• The evening and the morning;—till a boon
• Of double weakness sinks him, and he knows
• One or two other days shall end his woes:
• One or two mournful evenings, glimmering grey,
• One or two hopeless risings of new day.
• One or two noons too weak to brush off flies,
• One or two nights of flickering feeble sighs,
• One or two shivering breaks of helpless tears,
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• One or two yearnings for forgotten years,—
• And then the end of all, then the great change,
• When the freed soul, let loose at length to range,
• Leaves the imprisoning and imprisoned clay,
• And soars far out of reach of sorrow and decay!”

• Then Claud, who watched the faint and pitying flush
• Tint her transparent cheek; with sudden gush
• Of manly ardour, spoke of soldier deaths;
• Of scattered slain who lay on cold bleak heaths:
• Of prisoners pining for their native land
• After the battle’s vain and desperate stand;
• Brave hearts in dungeons,—rusting like their swords;
• And wounded men,—midst whom the rifling hordes
• Of spoil‐desiring searchers crept and smote,—
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• Who vainly heard the rallying bugle’s note,
• Or the quick march of their companions pass;
• Sunk, dumb and dying, on the trampled grass.

• Then also, the meek anxious Prior told
• Of war’s worst horrors,—when in freezing cold,
• Or in the torrid heat, men lay and groaned,
• With none to hear or heed them when they moaned;
• Or, with half‐help,—borne in a comrade’s arms
• To where, all huddled up in feverish swarms,
• The dying numbers mocked the scanty skill
• Of wearied surgeons,—crowding, crowding still,
• With different small degrees of lingering breath,
• Asking for instant aid, or choked in death.
• Order, and cleanliness, and thought, and care,
• The hush of quiet, or the sound of prayer,
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• These things were not:—nor, from the exhausted store,
• Medicines and balms, to help the troubling sore;
• Nor soft cool lint, like dew on parched‐up ground,
• Clothing the weary, burning, festering wound;
• Nor delicate linen; nor fresh cooling drinks
• To woo the fever‐cracking lip which shrinks
• Even from such solace; nor the presence blest
• Of holy women watching broken rest,
• And gliding past them through the wakeful night,
• Like her whose Shadow made the soldier’s light.*

• And as the three discoursed of things like these,
• Sweet Gertrude felt her mind grow ill at ease.
• The words of Claud,—that God took what was given
• To teach their hearts to turn from earth to heaven;
• The Prior’s words, of tender mild appeal,
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• Teaching her how for others’ woes to feel;
• Weighed on her heart; till all the past life seemed
• Thankless and thoughtless: and the lady dreamed
• Of succour to the helpless, and of deeds
• Pious and merciful, whose beauty breeds
• Good deeds in others, copying what is done,
• And ending all by earnest thought begun.

• Nor idly dreamed. Where once the shifting throng
• Of merry playmates met, with dance and song,—
• Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim
• A Hospital, in all things but the name.
• In that same castle where the lavish feast
• Lay spread, that fatal night, for many a guest,
• The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch
• Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch,
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• Seeing her broken beauty carried by
• Like a crushed flower that now has but to die,
• The self‐same Claud now stands and helps to guide
• Some ragged wretch to rest and warmth inside.
• But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom
• Early or late her own sad spoken doom,
• Hath been pronounced; the Incurables; she spends
• Her lavish pity, and their couch attends.
• Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole;
• Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll
• Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds,
• But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs
• Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press
• All varying forms of sickness and distress,
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• And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled
• For years,—and many a feebled crippled child,—
• Blesses the tall white portal where they stand,
• And the dear Lady of the liberal hand.

• Not in a day such happy change was brought;
• Not in a day the works of mercy wrought:
• But in God’s gradual time. As Winter’s chain
• Melts from the earth and leaves it green again:
• As the fresh bud a crimsoning beauty shows
• From the black briars of a last year’s rose:
• So the full season of her love matures,
• And her one illness breeds a thousand cures.
• Her soft eyes looking into other eyes,
• Bleared, and defaced to blinding cavities,
• Weary not in their task; nor turn away
• With a sick loathing from their glimmering ray.
• Her small white comforting hand,—no longer hid
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• In pearl‐embroidered gauntlet,—lifts the lid
• Outworn with labour in the bitter fields,
• And with a tender skill some healing yields;
• Bathes the swoln redness,—shades unwelcome light;—
• And into morning turns their threatening night.

• And Claud, her eager Claud, with fervent heart,
• Earnest in all things, nobly does his part;
• His high intelligence hath mastered much
• That baffled science: with a surgeon’s touch
• He treats,—himself,—the hurts from many a wound,
• And, by deep study, novel cures hath found.
• But good and frank and simple he remains,
• Though a King’s notice lauds successful pains;
• And, echoing through his grateful country, fame
• Sends to far nations noble Garaye’s name.*
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• Oh! loved and reverenced long that name shall be,
• Though, crumbled on the soil of Brittany,
• No stone, at last, of that pale Ruin shows
• Where stood the gateway of his joys and woes.
• For, in the Breton town, the good deeds done
• Yield a fresh harvest still, from sire to son:
• Still thrives the noble Hospital that gave
• Shelter to those whom none from pain could save;
• Still to the schools the ancient chiming clock
• Calls the poor yeanlings of a simple flock:
• Still the calm Refuge for the fallen and lost
• (Whom love a blight and not a blessing crost,)
• Sends out a voice to woo the grieving breast,—
• Come unto me, ye weary, and find rest!
• And still the gentle nurses,—vowed to give
• Their aid to all who suffer and yet live,—
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• Go forth in show‐white cap and sable gown,
• Tending the sick and hungry in the town,
• And show dim pictures on their quiet walls
• Of those who dwelt in Garaye’s ruined halls!